Possumblog

Not in the clamor of the crowded street, not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, but in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

REDIRECT ALERT! (Scroll down past this mess if you're trying to read an archived post. Thanks. No, really, thanks.)

Due to my inability to control my temper and complacently accept continued silliness with not-quite-as-reliable-as-it-ought-to-be Blogger/Blogspot, your beloved Possumblog will now waddle across the Information Dirt Road and park its prehensile tail at http://possumblog.mu.nu.

This site will remain in place as a backup in case Munuvia gets hit by a bus or something, but I don't think they have as much trouble with this as some places do. ::cough::blogspot::cough:: So click here and adjust your links. I apologize for the inconvenience, but it's one of those things.


Monday, March 07, 2005

With my newly obedient charge by my side, it was time to get the laundry sorted and downstairs. Blue jeans, towels and boy underwear, darks, grays and khakis, lights, reds and yellows, girl underwear and delicates. Eight loads, which is a pretty neat trick to get into four baskets. Obviously, separate trips, including one unbasketed armload of jeans. And all but one of those loads was taken downstairs by my patient, and no-longer-crying, little burro.

One load started, then breakfast, which consisted of stuff I foraged in the pantry for, and then the next set of tasks--cleaning up all the pile of toys and movies and papers and dolls and pillows and blankets that had littered the floor of the den. No complaints from anyone--Oldest, of course, still being asleep. You know what they say about letting sleeping grizzlies lie. How she managed to sleep through all the mayhem I'll never know, but I figure it was part of those teen hormones. And Rebecca, who had been one of the early-morning wrecking crew who'd woken me up by making so much noise I thought she was auditioning for Stomp, had managed to also go back to her room and hibernate. Which was fine--she gets bossy, too, sometimes.

Anyway, as the little kids cleaned the den, I went and cleaned up the paper storm in the dining room where the scrapbooking had gone on the night before. I had thought that I should just leave it be and let the messer-upper clean it up, but it would have never gotten done. (Aside from complaints that the house is a mess and we didn't need to be so messy.) So, all the stuff was put back in the gigantic clear plastic sealable containers produced by Martha Stewart for K-Mart (and why these are superior to any others I have no idea) and with a mighty, back-breaking heave, I hoisted each one and took it back out to the shelf in the garage where they came from.

That done, more throwing away of paper was in order--the kids bring home a mountain of junk every day, and I do have a place to put all this. Mostly. When the tide becomes too great, though, it starts taking the path of least resistance and winds up covering any horizontal surface like a cellulose blizzard.

I hope I didn't throw away anything important.

Next, well, I'd kinda run out of stuff for her to do. So I told her and Jonathan to go clean their rooms up. Which they actually did--more or less. More, I suppose. Lunchtime, which consisted of leftover lasagna from the previous night, and then Mom got home and it was time to decide what was going to happen next. The intent was that since I had a building meeting at the church building at 1:00, and since the scrapbook kids were supposed to be there until 2:00, that we'd all go together, then come back and split up youngsters, because then Reba wanted to go shopping (she had a coupon, after all) to get Oldest some clothes that are the proper size (yet another recent vertical growth spurt, meaning the skirts that fit two months ago now barely cover up her backside), and I would take Boy and Cat with me to the skating rink. They had, after all, redeemed themselves with their hard labor.

All well and good, except I was beating my head against the wall to get anyone other than myself and the two littler kids to get up and let's go. We had to be out of the house by noon:30, and I was hyperventilating to get out, but I seemed to be the only one with some urgency. I had wanted to just take one car, but it was apparent now the only way I could make my meeting was for us to take both the van and the car. ::sigh:: I grabbed Jonathan and Catherine and told Reba to come on when she got around to it, and we were off toward the east.

Got there and not a soul was at the building. All the big talk about huge crowds of scrapbookers busily clipping and sticking and eating and gossiping had apparently been about as accurate as exit polls. We got out and went in and got the lights on and I set up my stuff and settled the kids into the back row of the classroom and threatened them with horrid things should they get on my nerves, and I tried to call Reba and let her know if she hadn't left already, that she should just go shopping instead of coming to the building.

She'd already left, though.

More people finally got there--one said that the scrapbook folks had left before noon. Nice to have some warning. Finally, most everyone was there, and since it was my meeting, we started on time, then as latecomers came in, I castigated them and upbraided them and rebuked them sorely. I wish people wouldn't laugh when I do that. Anyway, another good meeting, although this time we only had 13 instead of the 17 of Thursday night, and the comments weren't quite as broad-based. Still, it was a good meeting, and it ended exactly on time at 2:00. Now I have to get all the words and questionnaires sifted through. Good thing I have a lot of spare time.

Reba got there sometime during the meeting and got Boy and Cat to come sit outside the room with her, which was a blessed relief--I had already gotten onto them once for daring to giggle. And as we all know, we certainly can't have giggling! After we got through, Reba got her crew and I got mine--Jonathan was almost certain that Ashley wanted to come with us and play laser tag. "Buddy, I have a feeling that she would much rather shop than do that." But, he had to ask anyway, and, of course, she did what anyone would expect a normal teenaged girl to do--"DUH! I'm going SHOPPING!" He got over being dumped, though.

ON TO THE SKATING RINK! YEA!!!


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